


Tale Of The Tongues

by mihrsuri



Category: The Hour
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Multi, Multimedia, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5238386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snapshot of the formation of Freddie Lyon (with guest appearances by Bel Rowley, Hector Madden and special guest Marnie Madden). Title from a song by Karliene Reynolds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tale Of The Tongues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kapina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kapina/gifts).



> My recipient - I hope very much you enjoy this and it fills your prompt to know more about Freddie and what has shaped him. Happy Yule.

Freddie has always known that he is, bluntly ‘less than up to the mark’ which isn't supposed to matter now but it fucking does. It really does. He was born with a ‘half way between maybe’ sticker upon him and he determinedly rejects it as a middle finger to the whole thing.

His father raised him and loved him in a small but cheerful and tasteful council flat on a London estate that is most definitely only in the papers to lament its existence in various ways. Lord Elms raised him in posh schools (he’d angrily refused boarding school), posh country houses and ski holidays. Except he was never allowed to forget that he was there on sufferance. That it was all because he might have been Lord Elms biological child or because his mother had worked for them as a private secretary or maybe both.

It’s still on sufferance.

Lady Elms seems to alternate between resentment (that she hides) and feeling sorry for him and he wishes she’d bloody decide. At least she doesn't expect him to have manners or polish or mutter about him having gotten into a fight. Again. (It was over alternately being called ‘chav boy’ or the classroom opinion on tax policy - Freddie will happily yell at people for both).

Ruth likes him though. Freddie is surprised he likes her - Tatler covers, pony club, polo club and all. Also she doesn't pretend to be less than posh and they both love cigarettes and radical politics (they argue in working class pubs and posh social clubs they shouldn't be able to get into and roll their eyes over all of them).

They make each other laugh over bottles of wine and call each other ‘kind of siblings’ because what else can you do really, Freddie thinks when you get thrown together because you might be siblings but no one is going to talk about it or confirm it. Might as well laugh about it.

Freddie finally settles in a posh London day school and writes an angry series of investigative journalism blog posts about the low wages and terrible working conditions of the workers there. He’d know after all - one of the cleaners is his next door neighbour. (Later on he realises that naming his neighbour was the worst possible thing he could have done).

He’d always wanted to be a journalist and that hasn't changed. What does is that he discovers he can make people laugh by ranting angrily about things. So through university (yes he went to Cambridge and yes he keeps his working class accent and manners deliberately) he works on a column and sends them to Ruth (who is working in fashion in London). Freddie meets Bel Rowley at the university's newspaper where she actually manages to pull the thing into shape and is pushing for actual diversity of editorial board and staff. They argue about intersectionality and he falls in love right there.

Ruth dies of an OD in his final year.  

Bel holds him as he gets drunk on cheap whiskey and he vows he's going to solve it. Somehow.

Afterwards he eventually gets hired as a freelance writer for The Guardian (the other media jobs he tries ended up in him getting fired for 'being argumentative' 'personality conflicts' 'throwing things at the editor' - later on Hector laughs at that last one) and Bel works for the BBC. At some point Freddie finds his columns get him on television - he is darkly funny and it works and he might even admit to enjoying it. He publishes a book and it sells amazingly well and suddenly he can afford to buy his father a house outright and return the trust fund he'd been given by Lord Elms with the most sarcastic note he can write.

Freddie publishes another book and yells at people over twitter. Bel sends him advice over iMessage and he watches her rise up the ranks of the BBC and learns she doesn't talk to her mother and her father is a non starter. He takes her to a Lidl and they shop for frozen food and manage to be terrible at cooking even that.

The first time he meets Hector Madden Freddie decides that, in fact he hates everything about him. Afghan war vet, posh, titled, sports star and presenter who Freddie decides immediately is pretending to be a journalist. The trouble is the man is good at presenting, at interviewing and it's what is needed for this new in depth show Bel is developing ("I'll call it The Hour - top twitter trending topic and all") and he knows that for all his gifts? Interviewing on camera is not one of them. So they have to get Madden.  

                

(Years later Hector admits that he was terrified of Freddie in the beginning).

They circle around each other, Freddie and Hector - mostly civil because of Bel who refuses to let them be otherwise ("I am not dealing with your ridiculous pseudo whatever it is - get your jobs done") and develop a kind of grudging admiration for each others skills. At least on Freddie's part it's grudging - it surprises him unpleasantly, that Hector was happy to say there were things he could not do.

And then there's Hector's ex wife Marnie who is the kind of girl that Freddie always thought he'd hate - she bakes, loves pink, is best friends with The Duchess of Cambridge, loves flower arranging and afternoon tea and has more money that even the Elms. But somehow, bizarrely he loves Marnie as much as Ruth. Maybe it's that she taught him his first lesson about his own shortcomings and biases - but it's more than that. Marnie has a gentle, beautiful strength that makes Freddie smile. Watch the Queen conquer after all. It's through Marnie that he starts to see a different side of Hector - a Hector who has managed to own his faults and change them, a Hector who has survived, who has his own kindness.

And then Freddie finds out the Laurie story and he understands more than he has ever ever wanted to that Hector has survived and keeps surviving and enduring even now. It's not when they fell in love but it's what cemented it for all three of them - Freddie, Bel and Hector. And it makes the class thing sting a little less somehow, to know that in his family life at least Freddie has in many ways been incredibly lucky - he has a loving and devoted parent. It's one more thing that evens things out between them. It makes it easier to bear both of them knowing how to use the correct fork without being told or being looked at to make sure they are doing it correctly. 

They buy a big house together because as it turns out, they can now. They make their own home - one for all of them. 

 

     

 

 

  
  



End file.
